


small positives

by parttimehuman



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, COVID is a thing in this story, Fluff, Happy Ending, Holding Hands, M/M, and they were ROOMMATES, here's your warning, in case the current reality is triggering to anyone, touch-starved Theo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29945868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parttimehuman/pseuds/parttimehuman
Summary: Theo hasn't been touched in a year.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Comments: 9
Kudos: 101





	small positives

**Author's Note:**

> Don't mind me, I'm just trying to get back into a real writing flow as I'm tackling a bigger WIP! So here, because I needed a change, have some domesticity and fluff. I genuinely hope you're getting through this pandemic better than Theo is! Thanks for surviving this far, you're doing amazing!

Theo stares at the calendar. February 23. It's been one year exactly. One whole year.

  
On that Sunday evening, the 23rd of February 2020, he went on a date with a beautiful boy. A boy who let him choose where he wanted to go for dinner, laughed at every single one of his nervous jokes and politely asked to hold his hand as the walked to the car. A boy who drove him home and asked to see him again, who raised their intertwined fingers to his lips and kissed Theo's knuckles as they said goodbye.

  
At the time, Theo wanted to be patient, to actually get to know the guy, to make sure there would be a real emotional connection before there could be a physical one. But if he'd known the year that was going to follow, he might have offered his body up right then and there - in the car of a stranger. Because that Sunday one year ago was the last time any living person touched him at all, and now all that he has is the memory of a hand in his own.

  
Since then, the plague has ruined his life. Although Theo is young and genuinely dedicated to keeping himself in good shape and health, he walks around with a transplanted heart. None of his doctors could tell him how high the risk would be for him if he actually contracted Covid, but they all agreed that he better not try and find out. And if not for himself, then at least for the lost sister who made his life possible, Theo has to listen and do what they tell him.

  
It wasn't an easy thing to do. He had to quit his job and is now surviving on the money he makes ghostwriting some college dumbasses' essays. His living space shrank to one bedroom, one bathroom and a small balcony when he let another recently unemplyed dude in his twenties move in who now does the shopping for him so Theo doesn't have to get close to people at the store. His hobbies are now reading, watching Netflix and fucking crocheting. The friends who promised to keep him company during his isolation call more and more sporadically. Theo waits for the few decent tv shows in existence to come on in the evening like he's a kid waiting for Christmas morning. It's honestly pathetic. And sad.

  
Theo's staring at the calendar gets interrupted by the door opening and being kicked shut a moment later. "Honey, I'm hoooooome."

  
Theo rolls his eyes. He truly managed to get himself the most obnoxious roommate possible. And the worst part is, he's noticed that he doesn't even get annoyed at him anymore. Because no matter how silly and clueless and stubborn this guy is, he's the only thing Theo's got.

  
"Please tell me you brought dinner," Theo replies in the general direction of the front door, "because I'm starving in here."

  
"Ah shit, I knew I was forgetting something."

  
"Seriously?" Theo should have never trusted this person to be his only connection to the outside world and thereby, his food supplier. "This is so typical of you, man," Theo keeps complaining on his way to the kitchen, "literally what more important thing was there to remember than dinner?" He stops at the kitchen door, a safe distance away from the back that's turned towards him while groceries are being unpacked. If it hadn't been a year already since the last time a boy looked at him, Theo would never take note of the broad shoulders his roommate has, or the round little butt in his jeans. Theo wills his eyes shut. Fuck, someone needs to find a magical antidote against Covid immediately. Or against that fluttery thing inside his stomach.

  
"No, I'm just messing with you." And then he turns around with a huge grin on his face, blue eyes sparkling like pretending to have forgotten the food was an absolute stroke of genius by him. Theo would tell him not to look so damn pleased with himself, but then his grin turns into something softer, and his voice goes quiter, lower, and he looks Theo in the eyes and says, "Hi," like they weren't already in the middle of their usual banter.

  
If it was just the hot body and the dumb jokes, Theo could handle living with this guy. But it's this as well, this moment he takes for a greeting, this shift in the way he looks, the way he speaks that lets Theo know he's not joking for a change. His way of really coming home, really saying hello. Being - just for a moment - the opposite of the roommate Theo wants to hate. For a moment there's just Liam.

  
"Hi," Theo says back, but it sounds hoarse and stupid. He needs to get his shit together. And quickly.

  
"Sushi?" Liam asks, and damn, bless this guy. He really did somehow read Theo's hungry thoughts even from a mile away and brought exactly the right thing.

  
"You better not be playing with my feelings again, because I would kill a guy for some sushi right now, and that guy will be you."

  
Liam laughs and shakes his head. "Some things just shouldn't be joked about, right?" He grabs a paper bag from the counter and puts Theo's half of the food on the small table in the corner of the room. Liam himself eats right out of the bag and sitting on the counter to maintain the safe distance between him and Theo.

  
"So, how's your day been?" Liam asks with his mouth not as empty as his mother probably taught him, or at least tried.

  
"Why do you ask me that every day? You do realize that they're all the same, right? I wake up early but stay in bed until noon, I sit around, I read, I scroll through my phone, I fuck around on the internet for a while, I watch some Netflix. How's my day been? I don't know, like every other day for a fucking year."

  
"Damn, you're in an awful mood tonight."

  
"I'm in that same mood every night."

  
Liam shakes his head. "Not true. It's actually quite nice having dinner six feet apart from you most nights."

  
"Stop lying. You're just here because you lost your job and I don't charge you any rent. I mean, it's fine, we all have to get through this pandemic somehow, right? It's just - you wouldn't be here if there wasn't a pandemic."

  
"Yeah, and neither would you. We would never have met."

  
"Yeah," Theo nods. It's kind of weird imagining a life without Liam in it. Even if everything else would be better without the damn virus, something, maybe, would still be missing. But only maybe.

  
"Seriously, Theo, did you get bad news from your doctor or something? Does someone you know have it? Is it someone from your family?"

  
"What?" Theo asks, "No!" And then, more quietly, "It's nothing like that."

  
"What is it, then?"

  
"Stop being nosy."

  
"Stop pretending like you don't want to talk about it to someone. Hate to break it to you, man, but I'm your only someone for now."

  
Theo sighs deeply. Liam is especially annoying when he's right.

  
"Fine. But don't laugh at me. I swear it, I see you smiling even just a little and I'll -"

  
"Throw things?" Liam suggests. "You know, since you can't actually get any closer to me than you are now."

  
"Fuck you very much," Theo replies, although somehow, he appreciates Liam's attempt at humor. Just a little bit. But he orders the corners of his mouth back down and clears his throat. "Well, so, I realized early that it's been a year exactly since the last time... well, you know... the last time I -"

  
Liam's eyes go wide. "Ohhhhh."

  
"Yeah."

  
"You mean the last time you got laid."

  
"That is certainly not what I meant to say," Theo points out.

  
Granted, Liam is already grinning again, which is totally against the rules, and it's such a dirty grin too.

  
"Hey man, look, I get it," Liam tells him, "we're all limiting ourselves right now. We're all missing out on certain things. And yeah sure, some things you can do by yourself at home, but sometimes it's just not the same, right, and then -"

  
"Stop!" Theo all but yells. "Please, oh my God, Liam, stop. I'm not talking about sex, so will you please, please, please shut the fuck up."

  
"I'm not even judging you!"

  
"Why would you? You didn't even get what I said!"

  
"Well, what did you mean, then?" Liam wants to know.

  
And somehow, Theo liked it better when they were yelling just one moment ago, because truth is slightly more pathetic than being horny and tired of masturbating. But Liam has this way of asking without even asking, this look in his eyes that makes Theo squirm until he can't take it anymore.

  
Theo looks to the side, away from Liam's impatiently waiting face. "It's been a year without anybody touching me."

  
"Oh."

  
"Not in a sexual way," Theo adds. "Just. You know, just touching."

  
"Oh."

  
This time, Liam isn't laughing. Not that there's anything funny about Theo's confession.

  
Theo still isn't looking at Liam.

  
"There was this boy." He doesn't totally know why he says it. Maybe just because it would be too quiet in the kitchen otherwise. "He asked me out and we had dinner and it was really nice, and then he held my hand in the car the whole time while he was driving. Had my heart beating like a drum and everything."

  
"What happened?"

  
Theo shrugs. "Nothing. He called, I said I'd love to see him again but I had to be careful for the time being because of my heart. We had our second date via facetime. I kept having to cancel on him. We talked on the phone a couple of times. I stopped getting that fluttery feeling every time I remembered being in the car with him. Eventually, I couldn't really picture it anymore. He was just a voice on the phone. The months kept coming, nothing changed, neither of us tried hard enough."

  
"Do you wish you had?"

  
Does he? Theo actually has to think about this for a moment.

  
"Honestly," he finally admits, "I don't think I knew him well enough to really miss him now. I think I miss the feeling more."

  
"The flutter?"

  
Theo has to smile. Just a little. He looks at Liam, who's looking at Theo and refuses to avert his eyes. Another Liam thing that has sort of grown on him. "Yeah," he agrees, "the flutter."

  
"I'm sorry," Liam says. "I know that doesn't help you much, but I am. This pandemic sucks in so many big, life-threatening and life-changing ways, but it also sucks in so many small ways that slowly take us down but never feel like enough to complain about, you know?"

  
Yeah, Theo knows. He nods.

  
"Lucky for us," Liam says with a little smile, "small negatives can be faught with small positives."

  
"What does that mean?"

  
Now Liam has that smile on his face that says he has an idea, and whether Theo will like it or not, Liam thinks it's a great one, and he won't be told otherwise. "Oh, Theo, you'll see. Just you wait and see."

* * *

  
What Theo sees is a giant toilet-paper tower in the bathroom the next morning. And the pantry filled to the brink with cans of tinned food. The amount of rice that Liam bought alone could feed a small army, and there's equally as much pasta. It's ten in the morning on Wednesday, February 24, and Liam returns from his second shopping trip that day.

  
Theo, who hasn't even had his first coffee, and definitely wouldn't be out of bed if it wasn't for his utter confusion at Liam being at home at all instead of working.

  
"Liam? What the hell are you doing?"

  
Liam drops a heavy-looking bag and wipes some sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt. "Good morning, Theo," he says with a big smile. "I'm glad you asked. I'm preparing us for quarantine."

  
Liam's 'I'm glad you asked' was highly misleading in the sense that it had Theo expecting a proper explanation, which he never got. All he knows now is that Liam called in at his job that serves as a bad replacement for the job he lost ten months ago, told them he wouldn't be coming in the next two weeks, and then went to buy the entire local grocery store, or so it seems to Theo.

  
With that Wednesday begins a fourteen-day long period of quarantine, that, ironically, at least to Theo, seems a lot less like quarantine than the entire year before. Although he doesn't really understand what Liam is doing and why, he would be lying if he said he didn't like being not quite so alone.  
Watching Netflix with Liam is a whole different experience, even if Theo is pressed into the corner of the bed and Liam is sitting on a chair at the opposite end of the room, because Liam won't stop sharing the stupidest hypotheses as to where he thinks the plot of the show will go next. At the beginning, Theo simply rolls his eyes when Liam explains why he likes or dislike this or that charcter, but eventually he starts ranting, letting Liam hear all the reasons why he's wrong.

  
They play cards using an old pool noodle, sitting on the floor and using the pool noodle to push their cards to the middle. Liam's utter disrespect for the rules of the game lead to a pool-noodle fight that ends with them both literally rolling on the floor laughing and holding their bellies.

  
Liam reads instructions to Theo from a website on his tablet while Theo tries to cook, and the whole process end up such a catastrophe that they're both surprised when the food tastes kind of okay in the end. Liam insists on playing spin the bottle after they finish dinner, although Theo tells him countless times how little sense it makes with only two people. It's really just Liam asking Theo questions and trying to get him to answer truthfully, and it's kind of nice that they're getting to know each other.

  
After the first week, Liam has painted the wall with a bunch of markers and promised to properly renovate it once the pandemic is over, but Theo likes the colors. They've told each other about their birth towns, their parents, siblings and childhood friends, about high school crushed and sports teams they used to be a part of and dreams they had. Theo, without actively deciding that he was ready, even shared the story about the loss of his big sister, that it's her heart now beating in his chest, that she's why there's no other option that taking good care of himself.

  
Liam is surprisingly good at listening, but he has a few not-so-fun stories himself, like the one about his father walking out on his mother, or growing up with Intermittent Explosive Disorder and going undiagnosed for most of his childhood and youth.  
As the days pass, the guy who was supposed to provide Theo with food and a bad joke here and there becomes an actual human person, and it's true what they say: people, like this one, contain multitudes. Behind the pretty blue eyes and muscles and the humor, there's a lot of struggle, and kindness. A lot of ambition, and loyalty. A lot of love for his family, and anger at those who've tried to harm it. There's a lot of intelligence there, and a special interest in history and sports. The more Theo gets to know Liam, the happier he is to be stuck inside an apartment with exactly this one guy out of all people.

  
After a long of thinking Liam was just the roommate he temporarily depended on, Theo could say many things about Liam now to express how is opinion has changed, but maybe there doesn't need anything else to be said other than that he stops counting the days that they're alone together.

  
He has no idea what's happening when Liam stands at his bedroom door all of a sudden, looking at his watch.

  
"What's happening?" Theo asks when he's counted to ten and Liam still hasn't said or done anything.

"Just one more minute," Liam answers, which, to Theo, isn't really an answer.

  
"One minute until what?" Theo sits up on his bed, curious what Liam is on about.

  
"Until my quarantine is over."

  
And damn, that isn't supposed to do to Theo what it does. It's like a little tug somewhere inside him, not actual pain but definitely not a pleasant feeling. But quarantine is over for Liam, and that's a good thing. He gets to go outside again. And see people that aren't Theo.

  
"Awesome," Theo says, wishing it sounded like he actually means _awesome._

  
Liam is still looking at his watch, but he has that smile on his face that slowly brightens, and Theo finds it hard to think sad thoughts as he sees it, but he can't entirely ignore the fact that while Liam is free after just two weeks, Theo is back to being alone again.

  
Liam starts counting down seconds. "Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

  
Theo closes his eyes.

  
The mattress dips a little. Theo exhales.

  
"Are you okay?" Liam asks. He's close. His voice sounds so much better when it's coming from directly next to Theo.

  
"What are you doing?"

  
Liam smiles and holds out his hand. Theo looks at it. Looks back up at Liam's face, bright and beautiful. And back down at his hand, big and soft and... inviting?

  
"Holding your hand," Liam says, "if you let me. Which I really hope you will because I went into quarantine for this."

  
"You went into quarantine for _this?"_ Beyond repeating Liam's last words, Theo is actually a little speechless.

  
Liam shrugs. "Small positives."

  
It's not a car, this time. And there wasn't a fancy dinner. It's not dark outside because it's actually just before noon. Theo isn't even dressed. Liam isn't dressed either.

  
It's just a Wednesday in March. It's just two boys sitting on the bed next to each other, one offering his hand and the other taking it. It's just skin on skin, palm against palm, fingers finding their way around each other.

  
Just that, and a heart beating like a drum.

  
Just that, and a flutter.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos, comments, or any form of encouragement via [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/flyde) & discord increase the chances of me writing more again soon by 90000%.


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